The alleged betrayal of their country by two former U.S. intelligence officers underscores how dangerous an adversary is Communist China.

The problem is not simply that Chinese espionage agents are evidently doing successfully in the United States what spies do the world over. They recruit turncoats – using bribes, sex, blackmail and other techniques – to obtain access to foreigners’ state secrets.

What is especially worrying, however, about the cases of Kevin Mallory and Ron Hanson, two veterans of the Defense Intelligence Agency, is that the Chinese may have identified them using the immense trove of sensitive data about U.S. government employees that Beijing is believed to have hacked from the Office of Personnel Management.

If so, they are likely not to be the last Americans targeted employing such information – especially our own spies, service members, defense contractors and others with security clearances.